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New additions to the Focusrite family NAMM 2009

15 Jan 2009

NAMM sees the launch of the groundbreaking Liquid Saffire 56 and two Focusrite FX Suites

NAMM has traditionally been a launch pad for the industries key players to announce some of the most significant releases of the year. 2009 is no exception as Focusrite unveil their Liquid Saffire 56 and two Focusrite FX Plug-in Suites.

Liquid Saffire 56

The Liquid Saffire 56 is Focusrite's new flagship Firewire interface. It has generated a great deal of excitement in the industry as it marries Focusrite's celebrated Liquid technology with its new generation of Firewire interfaces (led by the critically acclaimed Saffire Pro40). Two of the eight mic pre's use the third generation of Liquid pre amps, building on technology used in the Liquid Channel and Liquid 4Pre.

This means that as well as six Focusrite's legendarily transparent mic pre's, 2 further Liquid pre's each provide a choice of ten different pre-amp emulations. These include emulations based on the Neve 1073, Pultec MB-1, Telefunken V72.

In addition to 8 mic pre's, Liquid Saffire 56 includes 10 analogue outputs, 16 channels of ADAT i/o, stereo S/PDIF or AES i/o (on RCA phono), MIDI i/o, 2 virtual 'loopback' inputs, for routing digital audio between software applications, and BNC wordclock i/o. The Saffire Mix Control software provides ultra flexible control over routing and monitoring, which includes presets for immediate set up of commonly used mixing situations, and full metering across all inputs, outputs and submixes. This is just a few of the Liquid Saffire 56's many features, see product pages for full details.

The Focusrite Plug-in Suite Focusrite have also announced the release of two Plug-in suites: The Focusrite Plug-in Suite provides a collection of EQ, Compression, Reverb and Gating VST/AU plug-ins from one of the most prestigious names in pro audio. The Compressor and Gate have been modeled on Focusrite's hardware devices, using the measurement of Focusrite’s custom optos to achieve a vintage optical sound. The EQ module delivers a similar signature to the original Focusrite ISA EQ curves, and the reverb is based on classic studio designs and has been developed to allow users to get the right reverb sound with the minimum effort. The Guitar FX Suite The Guitar FX Suite from Focusrite consists of eleven professional VST/AU plug-ins for guitarists. These include five of the world’s finest guitar amp models and four distortion pedal effects, all courtesy of ‘Overloud’, experts in the field of accurate guitar amp modeling. The amp models include plug-ins based on the Vox AC30, Marshall JCM900, Fender Twin, MESA Boogie Rectifier and the Fender Bassman. The pedal models include plug-ins based on the Boss DS-1, the Ibanez Tube Screamer, the Electro Harmonix Big Muff and the Dunlop Fuzz Face.